Have You Been Impacted?

Phyllofix bought up a good topic last night. Have you ever been directly affected by who is president?

Personally, I think the last six and a half years have been great in various ways, and the only direct effect of who’s been president has been minor — having to change the channel or leap for the radio dial whenever he comes on. Even then, it has helped my language skills, as I’ve had to learn how to say Non ho votato per Bush in every country I’ve visited.

Have you ever been directly affected by who is president?

When I was a teenager I THOUGHT I was going to be affected by Carter being president, and I was a nervous wreck. I thought he was going to weak his way into a Middle East war and that I was going to have to go fight it. Didn’t happen.

I got hired here in the mid-’80s, which wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have a strong economy, so I suppose I may have been affected by the Reagan boom. If you got hired on your job in the mid-’90s or made a killing in real estate or through the Internet, that may have had something to do with Bubba. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about something more direct.

Like Kennedy reactivated the reserves and my father almost had to go back in the military in the early ’60s. It didn’t happen, but he came close — had it happened, that would have been pretty direct.

If you were running General Motors but then the president hired you to be Secretary of Defense — that’s direct.